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Saturday, November 01, 2003

Wow. I just realized. Halloween was on a Friday this year, making the day after Halloween a Saturday. That's the kind of arrangement I prayed for when I was a kid. No school the next day, meaning you could just sit and pig out on all the candy....

Actually, while I sat around home last night, passing out candy to trick-or-treaters, I came up with a brilliant idea for a video game. What do you think of this....

Sim Halloween!

The premise is simple. The main character (you) have been planning for the ultimate Halloween. The first stage of the game concerns designing, making, and/or buying a Halloween costume for optimal candy receiving. You plan it based on cuteness, scariness, whatever you think is best for you, and based on data from prior games. Once you have your costume picked out, you are presented with a map of the town. Here, you plan your route for, again, optimal candy receiving. With a plan in place, you go out trick-or-treating. Just like a real Halloween night, you run into friends along your route and get tips as to which houses are giving out what, so you can adjust your route accordingly. At the end of the night, you win based on how much candy you've gotten.

I tell you, I've come up with Sim Halloween, Sim Olympics, and my first and favourite, Sim Hick Town. It's time I form my video game company.

And I'm currently reading issue 2 of Dreamwave's mini-series Transformers/G.I. Joe. See, this takes place in World War II. The Axis of Evil is composed of Cobra and the Decepticons. The Allies are the Autobots and G.I. Joe. So now, we've got the Autobots and Decpticons turning into WW2-ear war machines, and the Joes and Cobras could have stepped out of the pages of Sgt. Rock. It's a very creative re-imagining of the Transformers and G.I. Joe universes.

It's a lot darker, too. The main subplot is Snake Eyes's revised origin in this universe. When the Joes first landed in Europe to assess the situation, they were ambushed by the Cobra/Decepticon alliance. Snake Eyes was seperated and cornered by his old enemy and blood brother Storm Shadow. Now, for something that hasn't been explained yet, Storm Shadow was kicked out of the Arishikage ninja clan and he blames Snake Eyes. So, out of vengeance, Storm Shadow drugged Snake Eyes and proceded to do a little slice-and-dice on Snake Eyes's face. That's where issue 1 ended.

Issue 2 has Snake Eyes being saved by Stalker. Storm Shadow takes off, and, despite Stalker's urgings that he see a doctor, Snake Eyes goes off in pursuit. Snake Eyes pursues, but, he is losing a lot of blood. He has to do something about the wounds on his face NOW. Snake Eyes decides to cauterize the wounds, and does so by turning a flamethrower on himself. It stopped the bleeding, but now his face is burned beyond recognition. He bandages up the burn wounds and continues the pursuit. He chases Storm Shadow to the ruins of an old European castle. Here, Snake Eyes spots an old suit of armor. To help protect his weakend face, he takes the helmet off of the suit of armor and puts it on (and, big suprise, the helmet heavily resembles his trademark mask from the original comics) and arms himself with the knight's broadsword. Now ready to take on Storm Shadow, Snake Eyes discovers that Storm Shadow has an ally with him now...the Decepticon beast known as Ravage. End issue 2.